Network Service Providers (NSPs) typically provision network services, such as point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and mesh services, across multiple network devices within a service provider network. The network services provide network connectivity to end-users, such as remotely located client sites of an enterprise system, through the service provider network. A NSP may deploy a network service manager having a rules engine to monitor the network services provided by the network devices in order to detect the occurrence of device-level events within the network, such as connectivity failures. Upon detecting a device-level event, the rules engine determines a service-level impact, e.g., a network-wide service failure, of the detected device-level event based on network service rules and dependencies. This allows the NSP to detect and respond to the detected device-level events.
In a typical configuration, the rules engine of the network service manager determines service-level actions, such as service-level alarms, by applying the rules to a data set of “dependencies” for the network. The data set of dependencies associated with a given network service is typically stored in a working memory of the rules engine during system initialization or when a service is provisioned. Dependencies, which are also referred to as “facts” herein, define relationships or links between the device-level events that may occur at each of the network devices and actions at higher-level entities triggered by the device-level events. As the service provider network expands to include more network devices and provision additional network services, the data set of dependencies for the network increases in size to capture all the relationships.